You know, two can play at the media propoganda game
A television commercial aimed at thwarting terrorism has reached Middle Eastern TV networks, using high-tech effects to show the anatomy of a suicide bombing in graphic detail.
The $1 million ad is packed with special effects, including the time-suspension technique made popular in the "Matrix" movies to show bodies, cars and broken glass flying in slow motion through the air....
The 60-second ad opens with a young boy seeing a man walk by in a crowded market. The man stops and exposes yellow explosives strapped to his body. The boy sees the bombs just before they go off, sending cars flying and people crashing through the windows of a cafe.
The ad then shows the aftermath: wreckage, weeping and fires. It ends with the words "Terrorism has no religion" in Arabic.
Who's the target audience of this ad campaign?
Issandr El Amrani of Cairo, who produces a blog, arabist.net, said the advertisement's concept is positive, but he's not sure that the would-be terrorists will watch, much less listen.
Yeah, well my guess its not aimed at the committed, its trying to prevent those whose minds are not yet poisoned by Jihadists.
Its sleekness, and the secrecy surrounding its creators and backers, lead some to think the U.S. government is behind it in an effort to woo would-be terrorists away from violence and encourage moderates to take a stronger stand against extremism....
The ad is on a Web site -- www.noterror.info -- where viewers can see it and read Koranic verses deploring violence....
A press release issued before the ad's filming said the project was funded privately by nongovernmental scholars, entrepreneurs and activists living in Iraq and abroad -- but did not elaborate.
If the US Government produced it, I say: "Great job!"
If they didn't, they should have...and should do more like it.
